THE NEW YOR.KER. would eat us all. But even if such an answer were true it wouldn't tell any- one anything about what is going on. (Even if psychoanalytically inclined thinkers were right, in a given in- stance, about why girls ride horses, that wouldn't tell us anything.) I had fallen in love with horse training, and with this horse, and while love is a dangerous guide there are parts of the forest we sometimes find ourselves in that no other guide even guesses at the existence of. H ORSES are not themselves capa- ble of forming the question quite as we do, but they are capable of seiz- ing on a solution when they think they have found one, as I was taught by a horse I'll call Star Blossom. I don't know for sure why so many crazy horses have names like Blossom or Sunshine or Pennies from Heaven, but I can guess. Blossom was a thirteen- year-old gelding, a nicely but some- what coarsely built quarter horse with a deep-copper coat. Unlike Drummer Girl, he gave no evidence on the ground of being difficult-he trailered quietly, walked easily on the lead, was coöperative about being tacked up and groomed. And he didn't look crazy but seemed, rather, to regard the world peacefully out of large, serene eyes. He also, when I first saw him, was wear- ing the only baby-blue roping saddle I have ever seen. Once anyone mounted him, he was a textbook maniac, though even that, despite his hard-core bolting, was de- ceptive to anyone watching from the ground; you really had to be on his back in order to feel how deep and persistent his insanity was. And he had, of course, been in the hands of numerous trainers. One of them had tried to teach him to stop by letting him gallop past a hitching post and leaping off as she tossed the reins over the post. So Blossom learned to slow down near hitching posts, but other- wise this vaguely behavioristic fantasy of training served only to teach him that per haps he could get rid of the rider by heading for whatever resem- bled a hitching post. Since Blossom was, in any case, easy to handle on the ground, I would lead him out to the center of the riding area (safely far from fences for crashing into and trees to climb), get aboard, and start thinking very hard and rid- ing very intensely. I mounted at a point that was also the crossing point -and thus for some exercises the stopping point-in a large figure eight. I could make Blossom stand still while I mounted, but once I asked, however lightly, with leg pressure for a walk he bolted. Here, as with the jumping exercise with Drummer Girl, I made no attempt to slow him; I only insisted that he bolt in a figure eight, and that his bolting be interrupted by a halt every time we went through the X in the center of the figure. He, like Drummer Girl, started to slow down, collect himself, and think, in order to be ready for the next halt command. The first day, it took nearly two hours to get him to halt in response to the leg aid or other request without a correction. The second day, though, he was halting about half the time when I asked him to, and I gradually began to ask him to halt at other places on the figure eight besides the X,. and to add in other ways to the demands I made on him. At the end of two weeks, he was calm at walk, trot, and canter, at least in the confines of the ring, but two weeks wasn't much against his thirteen years of studying how to be a crazy horse, so when his owners showed up I had no notion of putting anyone but myself on their sweetheart. When they first arrived, I happened to be working Blossom, and as we trotted by their observation post on the ringside fence they called out that that was sure a nice little 01' horse I was riding, and if they waited for a while would they have a chance to see Blossom work? That is to say, they didn't recognize their own horse, whom they had owned for a decade, so changed was he. The son, who was about sixteen- I'll call him Jim Andrew-fancied himself quite a wrangler and wanted very badly, once he knew that this was Blossom, to ride. I thought that it wouldn't hurt if he just went about a lIttle at a walk, and said this, and Jim Andrew got on. At first, he was stil1 afraid of the horse and followed my directions exactly. I allowed him to progress to a trot on a long rein. Jim Andrew had never trotted the horse before (Blossom had had only two gaits before, at least under saddle: halt and bolt), so Jim Andrew decided that the necessary transformation had oc- curred and he could now proceed in the old way. When I felt that both horse and rider were doing well enough to try a little cantering, and had eXplained the leg aid for the can- ter, Jim Andrew instead stuck his foot out preparatory to a bold kick with a sharp-heeled cowboy boot. In the mini-second during which I read Jim 49 . ... .. .. .. by learning how to rethink your eating and lifestyle patterns. The Hilton Head Health Institute's 26-day Weight Control Program will teach you how to replace bad eating habits with good ones for rmanent weight control. Learn our exercises for keeping fit and feel the benefits of good nutrition.. You'll develop that positive outlook which makes good 'health habits second nature. 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